Title: Solitary Confinement
Rating: K-T
Summary: Being married with a child can still make a mother feel incredibly alone and defeated. This was the very moment that Miriam Pataki knew that she wanted nothing more than to leave all of it behind her, and never look back.
Disclaimer: The characters, places and settings in Hey Arnold do not belong to me.
A side story of my fic, Memoirs of Miriam.
"Olga. Please. Just. Stop. Crying" a voice laced with anxiety and desperation quietly escaped from the lips of a young blonde woman, who, due to the large bags under her eyes, lack of makeup and unruly hair, looked ten years older than her own young of age of 21.
It was 9 AM in the Pataki home, and Olga had been awake since six hours earlier. This had been a most unwelcome situation, as Miriam had tried numerous tricks mentioned in the baby book, to try to get her daughter to sleep through the entire night. None of them had worked, as baby Olga had been awake for hours, and simply refused to stop crying.
She had woken up five times that night, the last time was because she was due for another feeding, and her mother, exhausted from sleep deprivation from the previous nights, stumbled from her own bed into the baby's room, almost as if she was in a drunken stupor from that lack of sleep.
At 9:45 AM, Miriam Pataki continuously bounced her baby daughter, trying so hard to get her to stop her wailing, to no avail. The baby had been, in Miriam's eyes, nothing short of a menace.
'Why?!' Miriam thought with anguish, 'Why? I've done everything. I've fed you, I've changed you. What else…what else could there be?'
She flopped down onto the couch, baby under the crook of her right arm, her hand glued to her face, almost ready to burst out in tears.
Olga had been born just three weeks ago, a few days before Miriam turned 21. When she found out that she was pregnant, Miriam fell into a panic. She and her recently married husband, Big Bob, had taken every step imaginable to make sure a pregnancy would not occur. Lo and behold, one did. That was when Miriam's world came crashing down.
She never even got the chance to express her thoughts of terminating the pregnancy. Her husband had insisted that she carry to term. He was strictly against abortion, claiming that it was "taking the easy way out." Miriam felt like she had no choice but to comply with her husband's orders.
But deep down, she knew she was making a huge mistake.
Deep down, even now, three weeks after Olga's birth, she wishes she had gone against her husband's wishes, and terminated the pregnancy. If he divorced her because of it, then so be it.
Because in her mind, anything was better than this.
In her mind, she was not cut out to be a mother. Not now, anyway.
Oh, she loved Olga, that much was true. Her daughter was a part of her. Miriam honestly could say that she did enjoy bonding with the baby.
But, that wasn't always the case.
When she read the baby books, looked at pictures of pregnant women and mothers on magazines, spoke to her friends who had children of their own, they had all glorified motherhood. They painted a picture of a woman who had it all, that they wouldn't change anything about it.
To Miriam, they couldn't have been more wrong. When people asked her how motherhood was treating her, she did the only thing she could do: put on a smile, maybe allow herself a small laugh and say that it has been the best thing to ever happen to her.
The answer that she wanted to give, was that while she loved Olga, she hated being a mother. And if she could go back in time and change everything, she would have done so, in a heartbeat.
Right now, more than anything else, she wanted to put Olga back in her crib. She wanted to pack her bags, and walk out of the Pataki household forever.
"Please," she said again, exhaustion laced in her voice, "Please, Olga, I am begging you. Please just. stop. crying."
She looked up at the clock on the mantle. Her husband wouldn't be home until much later that night.
Not that he would be any help. Other than working to pay the bills and putting food on the table, which Miriam was grateful for. But when it came to actually helping out with the baby, he would almost any excuse to avoid it.
"Come on, Miriam," he would say, "I just got home from work, and I deserve a little r&r. How am I supposed to run a beeper empire, if I'm stressed out all the time?"
His wife would say nothing, but when his back was turned, she would give him a scathing look, her eyes filled with resentment.
'I wish that for just one day,' she would think to herself, 'Just one day, you would stay home with the baby. You act as if this is the easiest job in the world, like I do nothing of any importance.'
She just didn't know why she even bothered.
It was now 11:30 in the morning, and Olga still hadn't quieted down.
Fed up with everything, Miriam fed Olga one more time. She burped Olga, one more time. She changed Olga, one more time.
Deciding she could stand it no more, Miriam got off the couch, and walked towards the baby's room. Placing a still crying Olga in her crib, Miriam walked out of the room, practically slamming the door behind her.
And she then went into the bathroom. Wrenching the bathroom faucet on, she sunk against the wall and began sobbing. Every ounce of frustration burst through, like water that had finally destroyed a large wall.
In her sobs, she decided that she would take Olga to her doctor's for a second opinion. Bob had the day off tomorrow; she would ask him if she could borrow the car.
But right now, she wanted nothing more than to disappear into a black hole.
Right now, she resented her husband for ordering her to have the baby.
Right now, she resented all of the woman who falsely glorified motherhood.
Right now, she resented her daughter for being born.
Right now, she resented herself for even agreeing to get herself into the situation in the first place.
Miriam Pataki was married with a baby, but even marriage and motherhood can make a woman feel alone and defeated.